Ayden (nine years old) has done a good job of cleaning the mason bee cocoons. The main thing is to get rid of all the pollen mites. We need to know how many cocoons we have but before counting we had everyone guess how many cocoons we had collected. All the guesses were too low but Tobia was closest with her guess of 600. The actual count was 770. We need to know the number of cocoons so we can put out the right number of nests next spring. Also we need to compare the number of cocoons with the results of pollination next summer. There are 1100 Bluecrop blueberry plants within 600 feet of the Mason bee nests and that is our target for improved pollination.

cleaned cocoons

how many cocoons?

It’s always hard to get good pollination with the Bluecrop variety. The result is a lot of small immature fruit as illustrated in the following picture.

poor pollination

The video advertised in the following link gives complete details on cleaning cocoons:

This is Jack. He is the world’s biggest blueberry smoothie fan. He is taking a picture of our blueberry pectin experiment. First we blended some defrosted blueberries and waited about 15 minutes for the blended fruit to jell. Jelling indicates the presence of pectin.

Jack

blended blueberries

The tilted goblet shows how well the blended blueberries jelled.

jelled blueberries

Recent research has identified pectin as an effective agent in destroying cancer cells

Scientists at the University of Georgia in the US found when prostate cancer cells were exposed to pectin powder or heat-treated citrus pectin, up to 40 per cent died.

The cells were made to “commit suicide” through a natural process called apoptosis that halts the creation of tumours.

Other studies on rats and cell cultures suggest pectin also fights lung and colon cancers.